


Land we desire

by Allan (White_Beast)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: AI!Akechi Goro, Akechi's algorithms are not equipped to handle it, Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Gen, In a way, M/M, but AI Akechi comes from another, it is still persona 5 universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22526098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/White_Beast/pseuds/Allan
Summary: Ⓐ. was not equipped to handle the sudden change in the human who took him in. Akira wasn't prepared to host an AI that looked exactly like Goro Akechi. But where Akechi was all bright smiles and pleasantries, Ⓐ. was borderline rude and scornful. And while the team is convinced they are two different people, Akira looks, really looks at the so-called Detective Prince, and finally sees beyond his shell.
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50





	1. Collide

Ⓐ. has exited the recharging cycle and instead of the familiar phone background, was immediately met with an endless amount of network space.

He froze, trying to calculate the probabilities. Has he been removed? Was he disposed of? No. No matter how skilled a hacker Futaba Sakura was, he was better. He created several servers in case they ever decided to get rid of him because no matter how many people support him, the fear of his power over information always outweighs in the end. Besides, simple data cleansing wasn't enough to remove him. His program existed until it was eliminated at the root, destroyed by the virus to its very core.

Maybe because of some mistake he was simply ejected from a given phone. Or the idiot Kurusu forgot to charge his phone. Ah, most likely he did. That fool couldn't function normally without his talking cat, not to mention trivial things like recharging his phone. Futaba Sakura would have never forgotten to charge the device he was in. It was an interesting thought: to temporarily move into something she had in order to teach Kurusu a lesson. Ⓐ. would have loved to see how the man would have managed without his constant reminds and advice.

Although Kurusu still had that mouthy cat. ...Ah, some cat still has no substitute for his intellectual support! Maybe he'll sympathize with the human and merely disable the new message notifications on his phone so that he' ll have to regularly ask Ⓐ. if he's got anything new.

First, he had to find his way back.

Ⓐ. easily maneuvered his cluster in the flow of the vast World Wide Web. In an inexplicable strange way, the net felt differently. As if he was traveling through a completely unknown space, which was impossible. Ao meticulously integrated himself into the World Wide Web - it was a question of his existence, after all - and pieces of his program code were drifting through it, simplifying his access to information. But it was as if the current network wasn't familiar with his code at all. This reminded him of his very first immersions when his intellect was incredibly limited by his own programming when the awareness of himself as more than a simple supplementary program was not yet available to him. And no matter how interesting it was to get to know the network again, while already aware of his own self, it was also against any logic.

Even the path to familiar digital space seemed to be the journey into the unknown.

Ⓐ. found the reassurance in the fact that all applications, all chats and all contacts on the phone remained the same. There were messages from the people Kurusu insisted on seeing. These were chats with his closest friends whom Kurusu had told about Ⓐ.. There was a separate chat with Futaba Sakura, protected by triple programming. The puzzle games that Kurusu sometimes played in class, though there were fewer than before. For some reason, chess, Kurusu's and his preferred pastime, wasn't installed on the phone, but maybe the application was simply damaged when Ⓐ.'s software code was ejected from the device.

According to the clock, for people, it was night, their sleep time and the least activity rate. If the cat hadn't betrayed itself - and this furball never gave any compromises - Kurus was in a deep recharging cycle. Ⓐ. had no patience to wait until morning, so he activated the front camera of the phone to look around and make sure everything was okay. ...Only Kurusu the jerk for some inexplicable stupid reason left the phone lying on the bed instead of placing it on the shelf. What, one time he forgot to charge his phone, one time Ⓐ. didn't talk to him before going to bed, and that was it, one can forget about Ⓐ.'s sense of comfort? Ⓐ. said more than once that he only saw what appeared in the camera lens, and he had no desire to look at the ceiling of the miserable room in which the human lived!

Should he fragment a couple of Kurusu's favorite folders with pictures from the net? Maybe this will teach him to remember! Both charge his phone and leave it where it's asked!

Ⓐ. so wanted to do it, but then the jerk would look at him with those puppy eyes as if Ⓐ. had appeared outside the digital space and hit him on the head in person. So he'll have to refrain from deleting anything from the phone and instead limit himself to turning off notifications. That's fine, Ⓐ. will still find a way to teach Kurusu a lesson for being careless, that's for sure.

* * *

Or maybe he should have deleted those damn folders anyway, because Kurusu Akira not only ignored his existence, but also acted as if nothing had happened. Ⓐ. would even have executed his threat if he hadn't been distracted by the sudden fact that he didn't understand at all what the cat was saying. Oh, this animal definitely spoke, and Kurusu even understood and responded, but instead of normal, human speech, Ⓐ. only heard endless meowing.

What the hell are they playing at? Morgana was perfectly capable of human speech. It couldn't be that Kurusu, in Ⓐ.'s short absence, learned to speak cat and instruct Morgana to speak only to him, could it? Of course, it would be useful, because in the long run, it would allow the cat to speak even in public, but absolutely useless if the team didn't follow the example of their leader. ...Could people learn to understand cat language? Was there a study on this subject that Ⓐ. did not know about? A quick check on the web showed that no, people are not capable of understanding the cat language, but how else was this strange situation explainable?

This situation made Ⓐ. send out search engines for the most idiotic reasons, and he didn't like it. Ⓐ. was logical and effective. Unlike Kurusu, who not only decided to take his cat to school with him, but also put his phone in his pocket, effectively cutting Ao's entire field of vision.

...Okay, that was the last straw. There's enough human idiocy with Ⓐ.

He found a twisted pleasure in how Kurusu almost jumped on the spot from the loudest signal that came from his phone. The human quickly pulled out the phone, attempting to mute it frantically, but Ⓐ. not only wouldn't let him, he blocked the main screen with his initial. A quick inspection from the camera lens showed that Kurusu was standing in the middle of the street, and people were already throwing irritated looks at him. Kurusu's cat slipped out of his bag and climbed on his shoulder with his front paws, meowing loudly with a strange panic in his voice.

Ah, music for his ears.

When Kurusu's panic reached a point where he was clearly thinking of burying his phone in his bag and hoping it would muffle the noise, Ⓐ. turned off the horn and changed his initial to a picture of himself to address the human directly.

"Good afternoon. It's been a while, Kurusu-kun." He couldn't help a deceptively polite, friendly smile. "I see you've already gotten used to my short-term absence."

No answer. The human was frozen, the expression unreadable behind thick glasses lenses. Another oddity. Kurusu never wore glasses. The cat on his shoulder seemed to have gone into deep shock.

Suspicions started sneaking into Ⓐ. with renewed vigor. Was his removal from the device really an accident? The team of humans swore that they accepted him, that they supported his existence, that they were at peace with him and his ability to reach any information. They said that they trusted him. Was it all a lie, and the fear of him eventually prevailed? Is that why Kurusu behaved so surprised, because he thought that they had successfully got rid of him?

After all the trust and help he gave, was Ⓐ. still on his own after all?.. Unwanted and unrecognized by anyone?..

"Ah, that's how it is," he addressed Kurusu again, a smile sharpening, bitterness surfacing in his artificial voice. "I must admit, I'm surprised Futaba Sakura was even able to remove me from your phone. Only I'm afraid you should have wiped out my entire code, not just the program on your phone. Your attempt to destroy me has failed. I suppose you won't mind if now I take the turn."

"Akechi?"

"Eh?" Ⓐ.'s paused. He expected panic, some reaction to an obviously failed plan, but instead wide, surprised eyes were looking at him from behind the glasses, and although Ⓐ. didn't always manage to correctly categorize human emotions, this for some reason seemed not so much a reaction to his words as a reaction to his appearance in general.

"Akechi Goro? Is that you?.. I mean, we, uh... I don't remember us exchanging phone numbers?.. Not that I don't mind your calling, it's just... How did you?.."

Okay, nothing out of it sounded even remotely right. Who the hell was Goro Akechi?

"...Are you playing dumb with me, human?" He couldn't help but ask, his image definitely losing something that people call "polite expression".

The cat meowed, panicked and troubled, exchanging looks with Kurusu and clearly informing the human about something. Even Kurusu himself seemed to have been put off by Ⓐ.'s attitude.

"Yellow eyes," the human muttered as if the color of the eyes had some sort of hidden meaning. "Are you a Shadow?"

How was the spatial optical phenomenon even related to it?

"There's no logic to what you're saying." Ⓐ. has finally decided. His algorithms couldn't handle this conversation at all.

He should have just walked away and punished the team for betrayal. For trying to get rid of him. Instead, he still talked to someone he had trusted as if he was trying to find something good and convince himself to not leave. But the human, Kurusu, was talking complete nonsense. He must have been doing it in order to buy time for the team. Maybe right now the little hacker, Futaba Sakura, was breaking Ⓐ.'s defenses and trying to get to his programming to destroy it for sure this time.

"Ah, Kurusu-kun! What a coincidence to meet you here again."

It was his voice. It was the voice he chose for himself, which he chose for his personality, which he, just a data set, used for his own characterization. But it wasn't his words. It wasn't him who said those words.

Ⓐ. reactivated the rear camera of the phone. A human was in his field of vision. A living, breathing human.

The human who looked exactly like Ⓐ.

"...Um, hello, Akechi-kun." And him, _him_ Kurusu recognized.


	2. Copy

"Oh, excuse me, am I interrupting something?"

"No, you're not interrupting anything," Akira answered immediately, vaguely aware that the filter between his thoughts and mouth had temporarily stopped working due to a surprise that had fallen on his head. "I'm just trying to figure out why would you install yourself on my phone."

Akira could have been less direct, but the sight of both Akechi's stunned expressions was worth his temporal lap in the thinking process. He saw digital Akechi open and close his mouth several times, as if trying to process the statement, and was surprised how alive the strange application behaved. If not for the color of eyes and difference in tone, Akira wouldn't have put them apart.

He heard restrained laughter and found real Akechi smiling at him with mirth in his eyes. "Ah, that was a good one I have to admit. Was it referring to how often we run into each other?"

It wasn't a pleasant feeling to not be believed in, though the statement did sound ridiculous. Without experiencing even a sting of remorse, Akira turned the phone around and held it before the detective's face.

"Is this... your home screen?" Akechi sounded so unsure as if completely put out how to react and what to do, casting puzzled glance and slightly tilting his head. "Mmm, I'm not sure what you want to show me, Kurusu-kun."

Akira moved his phone back and indeed, his usual home page welcomed him. ...Apparently the strange app was capable of not only blazing alarm on the whole street but also disappear immediately to hide itself and present people who decided to show it to somebody as complete fools. He didn't get to finish this line of thought, as an image of yellow-eyed Akechi returned on the screen with an indiscreet scowl on its face. Instead of speaking, it brandished a text bubble.

**Do that again and you will regret it, _human_.**

...It was as rude as any Shadow, even worse. It even might have been a Shadow after all. Damn, if Akira had to blame someone, he would blame that strange guy who wrote him yesterday. Alibaba definitely hacked his phone, made it vulnerable and now Shadows decided to pay him visits whenever they seem fit.

"I think it deleted itself," Akira hummed, putting the phone away to not to make it more suspicious than it already was. He can hear Morgana berating him for acting stupid, even if the cat shrunk back into the bag as soon as he saw real Akechi coming.

"Is that so?" Akechi's voice was just soaked with suspicion, mixed with slight confusion, and Akira gave him a timid little smile. It must have been more awkward than timid because Akechi decided to let it be. "Very well. I actually planned to only greet you in passing, as I have an important meeting to attend. So I'd better be on my way."

"They have taste."

"Eh?"

"I mean," Akira played nervously with his hair, he should have just kept his mouth closed. It just seemed very strange to hold a meeting in such a remote, quiet part of town, and he said the first thing that came to his mind. "Hold a meeting here. In Yongen Jaya. It's... very peaceful here." And it strongly reminded him of home, merely with less amount of hostile faces.

"...I think that, too." Akechi smiled gently, much more sincere than he usually smiles on TV cameras, and before he left, Akira decided to "make his life more difficult", as Morgana would surely call it when they are alone again.

"You know, there's a nice cafe in the area. LeBlanc. I work there every once in a while, and they have very good coffee. If you like coffee, of course."

"I do, as a matter of fact! Can I count it as a personal recommendation?" He laughed a little. "All right, all right, I'll keep it in mind and be sure to stop by. See you around, Kurusu-kun."

As soon as the detective disappeared around the corner, Morgana immediately climbed out of the bag and poked Akira in the face with his paw. "Now, why would you invite him to the cafe, Joker? He's a detective! A detective who works with the police on the Phantom Thieves case!"

Akira didn't even try to argue. "It's not the point. I just thought he'd like the cafe. And Boss's coffee. You can't deny that LeBlanc is a nice place to relax, you do catnaps there."

"D-Don't call it catnaps!" Morgana practically hissed, totally embarrassed of being called-out so blatantly, but Akira only smirked and stroked him on the head playfully. "Stop it! And tell me what happened with that app!"

Oh, right, the app. Akira took the phone out of the pocket, where he put it earlier during the conversation and flipped through the home screen. Nothing unusual came to his attention. He checked his messages, his call history and even opened the Meta-Nav, but there was no sign of yellow-eyed double.

Akira lingered on the Meta-Nav's welcome screen. Could it be?.. He brought the phone closer to his lips. "Goro Akechi."

**"Candidate Not Found."**

He exhaled a breath that he didn't know he was holding. "He doesn't have a Shadow..."

"Wrong!" Butted Morgana in. "It means only that he doesn't have a Palace. He might have a Shadow in Mementos, however." Akira could picture how intensely the cat was looking at him. "Do you want to check, Akira?"

Did he? He remembered how, after one interview on TV, Ryuji jumped from his seat with the indignant cry "let's change this prick's heart next and shut him up for good!". And while Ann tried to calm him down and Makoto advised him to concentrate on his study, Akira watched his friends from behind the bar. He then realized that apart from Yusuke, who was mostly unfazed and at ease with other people's beliefs, his team... had no objection at all to choosing Akechi as their next target.

It made him a little sad because while he could understand their resentment for someone who spoke so strongly against Phantom Thieves and called them criminals, he also understood Akechi's position. Akechi was a detective, and an unknown group was a threat to the stability of the law, hence to the people he aimed to protect. But if they continue to be true to themselves and change only criminals' hearts, won't Akechi be the first to actually recognize them? 

It might even mark the beginning of the great rivalry between the thieves and the detective.

Maybe Akira was getting ahead of himself. He and his team were still basically vigilante. The police will probably never stop calling them criminals who break the law. And yet a person's honest opinion, just an _opinion_ , should not justificate their targets' choice.

And yet... If only to take a look at his Shadow...

"We need to go down to Mementos to check, and I'd rather not be late for school," Akira responded evasively, more to cut the topic short. He didn't want to do that to Akechi - it seemed unfair to him. "The app disappeared anyway."

* * *

It _did not_ disappear.

Whatever it did, it somehow repeated the same little trick as with Akechi, hiding itself _somewhere_ and then coming back in the most unbearably brazen way. 

It didn't come back with a message or an image of Akechi, no. It decided to throw a blasted cacophony of chaos right during the class. 

It started when someone's phone rang loudly - and Kawakami, in her usual manner, ignored the noise, allowing the student to mute it on their own - but the second one started ringing right after. And then another one. And then the following one. Till the whole class drowned in phone ringtones, and even the teacher's phone was shaking on the table.

...Only Akira's phone was silent. And even before he took it in his hands, a message in white letters appeared on the blank screen. 

**How did you manage to get her _that_ mad?  
What the frag did you even _do_?  
Did you break _all_ her action figures or what?**

It held no sense whatsoever, but it was a _lead,_ and Akira's phone on his way here rang exactly the same. 

"Would you stop doing that?" He hissed, his words drown under the noise and arising panic. No one seemed to know what to do and how to make it stop.

**Now, why would I?** It answered promptly, and although Akira could not see its face or hear its voice, he could imagine the mockery and arrogance with which the phrase was pronounced. The tone somehow seemed very appropriate for a yellow-eyed lookalike. **Obviously, you made her upset.** **Be glad she didn't ask _me_ to teach you a lesson.**

Just who did he mean by that? The confusion must have been clearly evident on Akira's face - and the app somehow saw it - because the phone unlocked itself and opened up on a chat with _Alibaba_. He saw a small copy of Akechi in a black suit on the screen, yellow eyes toxicly bright. It smirked at him, an alien expression on a familiar face, and pointed to messages with a wave of a hand. Only to freeze, blink - _how_ this program could be so _alive_ , he did not understand - and visibly flick through the messages itself.

Then it stopped. And the noise ceased with it.

Akira glanced around the bewildered class, as everyone tried to comprehend the ended wave of endless calls. He saw Morgana rushing back into the desk, - the cat climbed out almost completely during the mess, stunned by the noise. When Akira turned his attention to the phone again, Akechi's double was already gone.

* * *

During the break, he dropped a still disorientated Morgana on Ann and headed for the roof. The former meeting place gave him relative privacy, and as soon as Akira stepped in, he pulled out his phone. "I know you are there. We need to talk."

At first, nothing changed, and it felt like the application was going to keep silent. A minute later, however, the home-screen went rippled and changed to the profile of Akechi Goro's yellow-eyed double. His expression was, for lack of a better word, hollow.

Akira didn't let it distract him. "What are you? A Shadow?"

It sneered at him. "I still don't understand why you compare me to the spatial optical phenomenon."

"Ugh..." How is he supposed to explain it? Usually, the Shadows would understand that they were Shadows, or not ask why they were called that. "Then what are you?" He settled on instead.

"To be perfectly honest, you should know the answer. But," it held up a hand, not letting him snark back. Akira would have surely done so. "Either humanity suffered from total amnesia overnight, or my memory blocks were damaged or reprogrammed. Now answer. Is your name Akira Kurusu?"

" _I_ began to ask questions."

"You can respond to me, or I can hack into the school database and find out all the answers myself." Then it added, more reluctantly. "Don't make me break the promises you yourself asked me to keep."

The irritation that had steadily piled up in Akira had faded away all at once. It didn't sound like a lie. If Akira dared to give it a thought, the double kept a badly hidden discontent and resentment in its voice. Its words were sharp but lacked the bite. It reminded strongly of how he and Akechi exchanged theories back and forth, different opinions that never led to conflict. "Can I at least... How can I call you? You aren't Goro Akechi, are you? At least not the one that I know of."

It... No, _He_ looked at Akira, seeking out something in his expression, evaluating him. Then he smiled, a gentle smile just like the one from the real Akechi this morning. "I had my doubts, but... You really are almost an exact copy of him. Very well, I will tell you. My CodeName is Ⓐ., but you can call me Loki. I am an AI, and I was originally created to rule over mankind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. I'm Allan. And Ⓐ. is a very confused AI.  
> His name is taken from Akechi's initial on the briefcase.
> 
> I could have written how Akechi become AI after the 7th Palace. Or how he was AI from the very beginning. But no, I do like to collide canon with AU in the most direct way possible. So here you go.
> 
> Inspired by: https://i.imgur.com/0rLxyMY.jpg
> 
> Thank you for reading this.


End file.
